


life is warfare, and a visit to a strange land

by Ias



Series: the things to which fate binds you [4]
Category: Black Sails
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Arguing, Conversations, Enemies to Lovers, F/F, Flirting, Genderswap
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-02
Updated: 2017-12-02
Packaged: 2019-02-09 19:03:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12894705
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ias/pseuds/Ias
Summary: “How exactly does the most feared captain of the high seas learn how to spice and glaze a pig?”Flint does not take kindly to Silver prodding at her past, and Silver just can't help herself.





	life is warfare, and a visit to a strange land

The _Walrus_ strains against the ropes lashed to her mast like she’s trying to haul herself back to the sea. The sight of the ship’s broad hull beached on the sand like a dead whale is enough to send Flint’s fingers dancing in an impatient rhythm over the papers before her. She stops herself when she catches it. She doesn’t catch it often.

Her temporary office on the beach is certainly better ventilated than a room in any house or ship. The table and chair are sunk into the sand which more often than not ends up in Flint’s eyes, wiped away to scrutinize a chart or to glance up at the progress of the careening. The wind snaps at the canvas shading her work space, tugging at the corners of the papers she hasn’t weighted down. She only hopes the air will be as lively when the time comes for it to fill her sails.

She’s so intent on her work she hardly hears the padding of boots on sand until a shadow darkens the grid lines which span the map before her.

“How exactly does the most feared captain of the high seas learn how to spice and glaze a pig?”

Silver’s dry, lilting tone is enough to set Flint’s teeth on edge. The ship’s cook stands nearby, idly stirring a bowl of honey glaze. As it turns out, looking up was the wrong move. Silver meets her eye and grins, and that’s all it takes to keep her talking.

“You’re a woman of many talents,” she says, taking a step closer. Clearly whatever survival instincts she displayed when she refused to disclose the Urca’s location had evaporated.

Flint squints down her maps, keeping Silver in the periphery of her vision. “The fuck do you want.”

“Want?” Silver tilts her head as if considering the word carefully. “Well, I don’t _want_ anything at the moment. I suppose I’m just rather curious.”

“Take your curiosity elsewhere. Is isn’t welcome here.”

“Right. Of course.” Silver remains hovering a few paces away, stirring the honey glaze with a contemplative hand. Flint could tell her she needs to scrape up the sediment from the bottom of the bowl, but she doesn’t. Let the crew complain.

Slowly, Flint tears her eyes off the map in front of her to meet Silver’s gaze. Her eyes are wide, bright blue and slightly downturned at the corners—like a shy dog, easy to please. A liar’s face. Only open and innocent when the occasion suits. It’s easy to see that Silver is a snake. Or perhaps an eel, as slippery as she is. 

“But I do have to wonder how you came to be here,” Silver says, and with no further ado she’s sliding into the chair across from Flint’s desk, the bowl of sticky glaze deposited on the corner of a chart of shipping lanes the wind keeps trying to peel off the desk. Flint resolves that if a single drop of honey should touch her papers, she’ll shoot Silver where she sits.

“So what were you, before you turned pirate?” Silver props her elbows on the desk and leans forward, eyebrows raised. “There’s not many women I know who go from passable cooks to pirate captains.”

Flint stares at her. For a brief moment, she lets herself imagine putting both points of the compass through Silver’s over-eager eyes, before laying it down against the map. From the way Silver’s smile flickers, she’s intuited the direction of Flint’s thoughts. Her smile disappears. She removes her elbows from the table. And yet, incredibly, she doesn’t leave.

Flint sits back in her chair, smoothing her hands over the wood of the desk. “Why the fuck do you want to know about it?”

“It sounds like an interesting story.” Silver shows her teeth. “I like a good story, myself.”

Flint clenches her teeth. “Let me rephrase that: why the _fuck_ would I be inclined to tell you about it?”

Silver raises her eyebrows. “Because I asked nicely?”

“If you’re looking to get yourself shot before you so much as glimpse the Urca gold, probing into my personal history is a good way to do it.”

Silver crosses her arms over her chest. “Well the Urca gold does me little good if you decide to shoot me _after_ we’ve captured it. And from where I’m standing, the only thing standing between me and that pistol of yours is to _convince_ you not to use it.”

“Right now the only thing I’m convinced of is that you’d be much less annoying with a cutlass-hole in your chest.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t count on it. I’ve actually been stabbed before, believe it or not—”

“I find that deeply plausible.”

“—and of course, I lived to tell the tale; but not without considerable complaining on my part, which I’m sure you’d find equally unpleasant.” Silver hooks a finger in the open neck of her shirt and tugs it down and to the side, poking at a small scar just below her left shoulder. Before she can help herself, Flint’s eyes flicker lower: to the strips of cloth Silver has used to bind her chest flat.

Flint drops her gaze back to the maps before her and picks up the pen, slipping back into the work as if Silver isn’t there. She’s still babbling on about a blind man with a kitchen knife who had supposedly tried to cut her heart out, but Flint isn’t listening. Instead, she’s turning over a question that’s settled into the silt of her mind since the moment she cornered Silver in the wrecks.

“…Luckily, they managed to save the arm, though I still get an awful twinge when I strain it too hard.” At last, blessedly, Silver stops talking. Flint makes a few more notes on the page, hoping Silver will finally take the hint and leave; when she takes a breath as if to launch into an entirely new pack of lies, Flint sighs and gives up on holding her tongue.

“You don’t need to do that here, you know. The crew won’t care.”

“I’m sorry, do what?”

Flint makes a vague gesture towards the open front of Silver’s shirt, keeping her eyes on the parchment. “It’ll restrict your breathing, if you do it too long or too tight. Could slow you down in a fight.”

“Well, I’ll just have to stick with my current plan of avoiding any fighting, shall I?”

Flint glances up at Silver again, and this time she looks more closely. Certainly Silver has taken some pains to continue appearing as a man. There are others on the crew of the _Walrus_ who not only dress as men, but live as them entirely. It seems this life holds a certain attraction to those who would defend their right to live as they please with a naked blade. Certainly the ship’s deck had been wetted with blood in many such short-lived brawls of honor, before the crew caught on. Flint had allowed them, within reason; she knew what it was like to be forced to carve your place in the world out of the flesh of those who would see you destroyed—or made into something so different from yourself it was little better than destruction. In the end, it had made the crew stronger. Proved that Flint’s ship was as close to true freedom as any could hope to find.

But Silver is different. Though some on the crew speak of her as a woman and others speak of her as a man, Silver never takes the trouble to correct either one. An enigma, of sorts. Flint hates enigmas. Anything you don’t know has a tendency to become dangerous, when given enough time.

Flint tapped her quill on the edge of the inkwell, considering how to phrase the question. “Does it bother you, then, that some of the crew see you as wholly a man?”

Silver laughs, as if the question is so quaint as to be amusing. “Why should it?”

Flint raises an eyebrow. “Many people would consider it an insult.”

Silver shrugs. “I don’t mind one way or the other. My mother might have called me daughter, if she’d taken the care to stay alive. I’ve found that being a man has its advantages.” She looks up at Flint with a wide eyed smile, carefully curated to look innocent yet be wholly antagonizing. “Which would you prefer me to be?”

Flint grits her teeth. “What I would _prefer_ is that you complete the Urca schedule and then leap into the sea.”

“Well at least we’re being honest with each other. That’s progress.”

“I’d wager there’s not one fucking honest thing about you, ‘John Silver’.”

“Oh, I’m sorry—I didn’t realize that ‘James Flint’ was your given name.” Silver’s eyes are sharp now, sharper than Flint would like. “I believe we both find it useful to control how people perceive us.”

The sand is sticking to Flint’s chapped lips; she scrubs a hand over her face and tries to will her growing headache away. “What’s your point?” 

She lounges back in her chair, arms crossed over her chest. After a day standing in the sun, her collarbones are slick with sweat. “I’d heard of the fearsome Captain Flint, of course, but I’d never heard that he was a woman. How _did_ you manage that?”

“How did I manage being a woman,” Flint repeats, deadpan.

Silver’s mouth twists. “Allow me to rephrase. The men—and women, of course—of your crew might be willing to keep the secret, but what of the prizes you’ve taken? A woman grabbing a sword and a ship and turning pirate, let alone being quite _good_ at it, is exactly the sort of tale to be bandied about every news stand in London for years to come.” Silver inclines her head forward conspiratorially. “So why is it that no one has even heard it to begin with?”

Flint twirls the compass between her fingers. She doesn’t have to answer. And yet. “The mask helps.”

“But you don’t wear it all the time.”

Flint shrugs. “Imagine you’re the captain and crew of a ship just raided by pirates. You were outmaneuvered, outgunned, outfought—or perhaps you merely surrendered at first sight of the black. You’ve been beaten. _Unmanned._ And when you realize that it was all at the hands of a woman?” Flint smiles. “Even the few that might tell the tale as it happened would be made a laughing stock. England herself would be made to look a fool if they allowed the knowledge to spread that a mere woman could stand against them.”

“Seems like a good reason to make it common knowledge.”

“And I will. When the time is right.”

For a moment Silver just stares at her. “You don’t do anything without thinking it through five ways over, do you?”

Flint stares at her. “And you don’t seem fond of thinking through anything.”

“Tossing insults, Captain? You wound me.” Silver presses a hand over her heart with an expression of manicured hurt. “At least my poor decision making gives me an excuse to be here. But you don’t exactly strike me as a natural outlaw.”

“And what do I strike you as?”

The question slips out before Flint can even ask herself why she’s asking it. As soon as she realizes it—that she’s making _conversation_ —the illusion is whisked away like sand on the wind. The problem with Silver is that she is _very_ good at worming her way in. Flint is starting to actually feel at ease with her; and that, of course, is what sets off the warning bells. Flint never feels at ease with anyone.

So her hand is already gripping the compass tighter when Silver leans forward with a conspiratorial grin. “Oh, I don’t know. Not born too well, if your accent is any sign; but you speak with an education. Aspirations above your station, perhaps, which would explain the urge to take up piracy if not give a reason for it.”

Silver stares into Flint’s face as if she can read it as clearly as a map, and Flint can only glare back. The anger builds in her chest like a thunderhead as Silver clumsily paws at her history. “So how’d it happen, then?” Silver continues blithely. “Pressed for money, and no inclination to make it on your back? Oh, _wait_. Don’t tell me.” A grin splits her face. She places her palms flat on the table as if bracing herself. “Could it have been love? A handsome naval officer caught your eye, or maybe your virtue, so you cut your hair and took to the sea to join him. Though I have to say you don’t seem the romantic—”

In one smooth motion Flint slams the compass into the center of the map with enough force it lodges in the wood beneath, trembling upright an inch from Silver’s thumb.

Silver jerks her hand off the table, her eyes getting sharp—but not afraid. Even now she stares at Flint as if only watching to see what she’ll do next. When Flint speaks, her words are measured, but not quite calm.

“Let’s get something clear between us: I may have consented to your continued presence on this crew. I may have assisted you in maintaining your cover among them. I have even gone so far as to promise you a share of the treasure you attempted to steal from us. What that does not make us is allies, confidants, and above all, _friends_.”

Flint stands up. Slowly, she leans across the table and fixes Silver with the glare she had perfected years ago; the look that made seasoned pirates see past her gender, to see what she was capable of. She jerks her head towards the cooking spit, where the crew’s neglected dinner is being steadily overcooked. “So the next time you start prying around in my life, I will spit you like that pig.”

For a moment Silver stares her down. But then a slow smile touches her lips. “Fair enough,” she says, and scoops the bowl of honey glaze off the table to amble away without a backwards glance.

Flint glares at the center of her shoulders as if sighting down the barrel of a muzzle. If it hadn’t been obvious before, it was painfully so now: John Silver was going to be a problem. Forcing a sigh through her teeth, Flint wrenches the compass out of the table and smooths her fingers over the puncture hole in the center of New Providence Island.

Something catches her eye on the corner of the map. A single drop of honey pearling on the parchment of a shipping chart, catching the sun like molten gold. Flint stares at it for a moment, forgoing reaction until she can resist her instinct to clean it up with a vigorous and repeated application of Silver’s forehead. Only a matter of days, and the Urca’s gold will be hers. She can keep herself from killing John Silver until then.

She wipes the honey from the paper with her thumb, and sucks the sweetness clean.

**Author's Note:**

> “Life is warfare, and a visit to a strange land; the only lasting fame is oblivion.”


End file.
